The Beast
I felt nothing.
Not the chains burning into my skin, not the dark, or the rage that had no ceiling and no floor. Only depth. I had been falling through it for four days and there was nothing to catch me and I had stopped expecting anything to.
I broke the first set of restraints in fourteen hours.
The warriors scattered when the iron gave. I heard them before I saw them — the sharp pull of breath, boots scraping stone, the clatter of weapons raised by hands that weren't entirely steady.
Their heartbeats filled the dark. Fast, thin and loud, the way fear made them. It excited me that sound, it was so fragile, so easy to take.
"Hold." Silas. He was eft of the door, close enough that I could have reached him in two strides. His heartbeat was different from the others. Steadier. Older. The rhythm of a man who had stood in rooms like this before multiple times. "Nobody moves unless I say. Keep your positions."
